


I'm gonna make noise when I go down

by soberqueerinthewild



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canonical Character Death, Drug Addiction, F/F, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 08:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20355277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soberqueerinthewild/pseuds/soberqueerinthewild
Summary: Rosa Ortecho introspection just prior to her death. Pre-canon with 2008 flashback overlap.Originally posted to tumblr on 5/31/19.





	I'm gonna make noise when I go down

**Author's Note:**

> Includes references to Shenanigans "Here with Me" fic (AKA The ongoing saga of everyone thinks Isobel and Michael are dating). 
> 
> Title from Ani Difranco If He Tries Anything 
> 
> Working on posting all my tumblr fics over here, so you may have read this already!

Rosa knows how everyone in this town sees her. It doesn’t matter how many days, months, or even years are etched on the chip in her pocket she fingers like a touchstone, they’ll always see the drug addict, the criminal, the screw up. They are never going to see anything else, so Rosa stomps around Roswell in tall boots, wears fishnets under her uniform, has a sharp word or glare for anyone who deigns to judge her. She refuses to kowtow to this town and what it wants her to be.

Some days she thinks the only person that doesn’t look at her like she’s a delinquent, a disappointment, or damaged beyond repair, is Maria Deluca. 

Rosa can see, in the way Maria’s eyes follow her as she works her shift, she can feel, in the press of Maria’s body into hers when they sit side-by-side, that Maria would give Rosa anything she ever asked for. Rosa knows that if she let herself, she would take. Take and take until Maria had nothing left for herself. Liz is the selfless one, the perfect one. Rosa is the corrupter, the wild child; she’s the one who hurts, and takes, and _breaks_. Maria will learn someday, about people who are too broken to love you. She’ll learn about the armor she needs, why there’s a cage around her heart. But Rosa refuses to be the one to teach her.

Because Maria Deluca is sunshine, she is guileless, innocent. No amount of joints, booze, and stupid dares on the roof of the Crashdown could take that from her. But Rosa knows _she_ could, if she let herself.

Rosa thinks Maria might love her, at least in the way that 17 year olds sometimes mistake infatuation for love. But she doesn’t really see her. No, Maria Deluca looks at her with hero worship in her eyes. She looks at Rosa like she hung the moon, like she thinks maybe Rosa has all the answers. She doesn’t see the broken, motherless girl, who chased a high to silence the voices that never stopped telling her she wasn’t enough. She can’t bear to let Maria close enough to see that girl. She thinks she wouldn’t survive seeing the stars fall from Maria’s eyes. 

So instead of leaning back, leaning in, Rosa bounces off. Ignores the way Maria’s gaze lingers, pretends she doesn’t see Maria’s hand slide closer. Rosa’s learned to stay in motion with Maria. She deflects hints with questions about Maria’s crushes, encourages her to go on dates with boys, pretends she sees her more like Liz's best friend, like another little sister. Anything to push her away enough so Rosa doesn’t forget to keep moving. If she stands still she might let herself fall. She does all this because she knows it’s for the best; she couldn’t bear to destroy Maria the way she knows she would. But that doesn’t mean Rosa doesn’t _want. _

Rosa doesn’t remember the first time she kissed a girl. But she remembers the wanting. Out in the desert, stumbling around with Frederico and his friends, the world spinning, her head clouded, she remembers the girl, she thinks her name was Sonia, but it could’ve been Sofia, stepping closer. When she crowded up against Rosa, Rosa remembers that the sound of the boys jeering, daring them to kiss, dropped away, and all she could hear was the pounding of her own heart. That’s where the curtain abruptly falls. The next thing she remembers is waking up with bruises shaped like fingerprints around her upper arm. Rosa’s no stranger to waking up with bruises. She’s clumsy when she’s drunk or high. Finds bruises on her knees, her shins, from bumping into things, sometimes bruises on her inner thighs, her hips, when Frederico forgets to be gentle. But this is different. Frederico may never have laid a hand on her before, but she knows what it looks like when someone grabs you with intentions to hurt. She’s seen it too many times, those same patterns of bruises, around Alex Manes’s throat. 

Alex always wore weather inappropriate turtlenecks the days he showed up at the diner, guitar in hand, a wild look on his face. The first time they played guitar together was happenstance. He was looking for Liz and found Rosa instead. She recognized pain in his eyes, not like hers, but familiar all the same. She took him to her sanctuary, the roof of the Crashdown, and they sat in companionable silence, strumming their guitars. Usually everything is loud for Rosa, and sometimes being with people can be too much, (almost, but not quite worse than being alone), but with Alex somehow she finds quiet. They don’t need to talk, they can just be. So the next time he showed up, they didn’t exchange words, instead they quietly escaped up the stairs. The fifth time it happened, Alex let her scoot close, and didn’t pull away when she carefully folded down the neck of his sweater. He let her gently brush her fingertips over the bruises, tears in her eyes that she refused to let fall. She knew he didn’t need pity or empty words from her, but a refuge. She tried to be that for him when she could. So he had one place to go, away from hands that only touch to hurt. 

So Rosa knew what she saw on her arm that morning. She shook Frederico awake, demanding answers, and he filled in the blanks left in her memories. He hissed words at her like _puta_ and _marimacha_. She pieced together that the problem wasn’t the kiss, which had been orchestrated after all. It’s that she wasn’t supposed to like it. Should’ve been satisfied to perform for Frederico and his friends, but shouldn’t have allowed herself to be pulled closer. Should have stopped kissing as soon as the cheers died down, before she embarrassed him, before Frederico had to pull her away and drag her home. 

Rosa’s anger faded in the face of confusion and uncertainty. She lied to Frederico, sputtered out an apology, reminded him she was out of her mind, high, drunk, and blacked out. She still remembered the sharp want, but in the light of day, she knew that want was another secret that should be tucked away. Away from Frederico, yes, but away from her father, too, who finds peace from his worries about his wife and daughter in the halls of the Catholic Church. She’d always sworn to herself she’d be out the door the minute a guy laid his hands on her, but that day Frederico felt like a security blanket, like a defense against those words he spat at her, and the new rumors she knew would swirl. 

But the want didn’t fade. Rosa has kissed girls since, drunk and sober. Always stolen moments, with tourists, because she’s not ready to give the town more ammunition, more ways to label her “other.” But she’s never kissed a girl that was going to stick around, where she might have the opportunity to fall.

Boys were always easy for Rosa. She never really understood in high school why her friends (back when she had friends her own age) agonized about every smile, every word, every glance. When Rosa saw a guy she thought was hot, she flipped her hair, stepped in close, and touched his chest when they talked. That usually did the trick. It wasn’t scary or nerve wracking, it was kind of like a game for her, a hobby. And later on, a means to an end. Frederico was cute and all, but Rosa would’ve kicked him to the curb after a few weeks if he hadn’t had the hookup to the good drugs. 

Sober, the game doesn’t appeal to her anymore. She stays away from Frederico and his friends. She goes to NA. Finds a sponsor in Jim Valenti and holds onto him like he’s a life raft. Sometimes she feels like she’s gripping him with one hand and her sobriety with the other. Like if she lets go of one, she’d certainly lose the other. She needs him, so she tries to ignore the strange things he sometimes says to her, the familiarity with which he speaks of her mother, and the way he looks at her with a fatherly affection. 

She tries to focus on Arturo and Liz. Focus on making them see she’s not one misstep away from a free fall. She immerses herself in Liz’s life, with Liz’s friends, unsure of where she fits. It’s only sober that she begins to recognize what that glint in Maria’s eyes means, and the pull feels dangerous in a way it never did with boys. She finds herself tongue tied at times, when she forgets to keep moving and lets Maria catch her gaze. She’s suddenly empathetic to the struggles her high school friends tried to tell her about, but she doesn’t let herself fall, not for sweet, soft-hearted Maria Deluca, anyway. 

Isobel Evans is hard in all the same ways Maria is soft. Somebody already taught Isobel about armor. Rosa can see the places Isobel shattered once, can see it in the way she carefully put the pieces back together, sharp edges facing out. Isobel’s armor may be a bossy and bitchy veneer instead of a red dress or shit stomping boots, but it’s effective all the same. 

The only reason Rosa ever looked twice at Isobel was Alex Manes. One day, after getting tired of waiting for Liz in the parking lot, Rosa made her way to Liz’s locker and caught Alex in a stare. She followed his gaze to Michael Guerin and let out a giggle, delighted to see anything other than restrained sadness on Alex’s face. She couldn't resist teasing him just a little, but the sadness returned when he declared that Michael was off limits, that he was dating Isobel Evans. Rosa wasn’t convinced, though. She recognized the look on Michael’s face, the wanting. 

So she begins to study them from afar. They’re an odd pair, the bitchy, perfect social chair of every club, with the quiet, prickly genius who lives in his truck. But there’s unquestionably a bond there, an intimacy. It’s only Max and Michael that Isobel flashes genuine smiles at, instead of haughty or sarcastic smirks. She collapses into Michael after a long day, kisses his cheek with affection, but the intimacy isn’t sexual to Rosa’s eye. When Isobel catches Michael watching Alex, Isobel doesn’t react with the anger or jealousy of a girl confused as to why her boyfriend would be looking at another boy with naked lust in his eyes. No, she reacts with glee, a bump of her shoulder to his, a wrinkle of her nose as she talks animatedly. Rosa can’t quite make out the words, but hears the teasing tenor of Isobel’s tone. 

Once she feels certain enough that they _aren’t _actually dating to give Alex hope, she knows she should stop watching, but she can't. The more she watches, the more she develops a kinship with Isobel Evans. Rosa sees how Isobel clings to her brother, to Michael Guerin. Sees how her face falls when they mention their post-high school plans. She recognizes the fear of being left behind. As much as she wants nothing more than for Liz to put this town in her rearview, it terrifies her all the same, because what will be left for Rosa once she’s gone. 

They couldn’t be more different from the outside. Isobel’s a joiner, a planner; Rosa’s an outcast, a rebel. Isobel covers up her insecurities by putting on an air of perfection and confidence while Rosa covers hers with a ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude. But maybe neither of them is who this town decided they are or the act they put on. Maybe, at their cores, they’re the same. So Rosa watches, but she never considers that Isobel might be watching right back. 

The first time Isobel speaks to her, Rosa plays it cool. She’s lucky she spots Isobel coming from her periphery. It gives her time to school her features and adopt a bored indifference, even though her palms are sweating so much she’s worried she might drop the sharpie she’s holding. Isobel is different than she imagined, voice lower-pitched, demeanor quieter, thoughts more jaded. But she talks like maybe she recognizes the kinship Rosa senses. Her hours spent contemplating what Isobel might be like lead Rosa to speak more freely than she otherwise would’ve when given an opening. She thinks maybe Isobel can relate, that maybe with her armor intact, Isobel won’t crack under the weight of Rosa’s truths. This may be the first conversation they’ve had, but the weeks of watching make Rosa feel like she already knows who Isobel Evans truly is. She doesn’t realize then that she’s superimposed the Isobel she envisioned over the one standing in front of her. 

The next time she sees Isobel, Rosa is pacing the roof of the diner, trying to grapple with more terrible truths, about her mother, her father, and the cruelty of small towns and small minds. When Isobel steps forward to hug her, it’s this imagined bond and faux intimacy that leads Rosa to sink into the hug, to finally allow herself to lean back, lean in, risk the fall. 

It’s not until months later, as terror mixes with the drugs coursing through her veins, and a hand clamps over her mouth, that Rosa recognizes her fatal mistake. Realizes that she was so focused on pushing away the people who truly love her, so worried she’d hurt them, so fearful that she was the villain, the predator in this story, that she failed to notice that she’d become someone else’s prey until it was too late. 

In her last moments the faces of those who loved her even on days when she couldn’t love herself flash through her mind: Alex, Mimi, Jim Valenti, Arturo (who is her real father, no matter what DNA might say), Maria, Liz. She prays to whatever God might be up there that Liz doesn’t take all of Rosa’s lessons to heart. Rosa’s proof of what can happen when you try not to let yourself connect. People do need other people, she was wrong about that. If only she’d allowed herself to lean in to a real connection instead of an imagined one, things might have ended differently. Maybe she could have had sunshine and a happily ever after. She prays that Liz can find that someday, have the future Rosa never will. She holds onto that hope fiercely, focusing on her sister’s face, as darkness envelopes her.


End file.
